Giants Beat Extra: WBC-bound players will take center stage early on

The Giants begin a 37-game exhibition schedule against the Angels on Saturday, a game that KNBR will broadcast at 12:05 p.m. PST. Duane Kuiper is already in town. He got here early, saying something about getting fitted for a solar-powered hat.

I wrote a Giants Beat for Friday’s paper — you can read it here — that names the candidates for the jobs that are up for grabs in these games. There are wide-open competitions for three jobs that are not very sexy, but important nonetheless. In this blog, I want to tell you a little bit more about the early exhibitions from a slightly different angle.

This year, the 10 Giants who leave camp March 2 or 3 for the World Baseball Classic will see a lot more playing time than usual for late February. Manager Bruce Bochy has stressed several times that he wants to make sure these players, who are listed in this story, are game-ready to lessen the chances of injury in the Classic.

So, for example, center fielder Angel Pagan might play seven innings in a game by the middle of next week, when ordinarily a player in his position might not play seven innings until a week before camp ends.

“Physically, I can now,” Pagan said. “That’s why I worked so hard in the offseason, to be ready. The biggest thing now is getting back into baseball shape, getting my timing at the plate. If I had my timing down I’d be ready to play nine innings right now.”

There is always a lot of talk and concern about WBC players grinding in tense competition in March and what effect that might have on their bodies down the road. My friend Jayson Stark at ESPN wrote this story, citing an MLB study showing that WBC players actually spent less time on the DL in 2009. Nevertheless, health will stay on the minds of WBC coaches and managers.

At a press event in Phoenix on Monday, U.S. manager Joe Torre said pitching coach Greg Maddux has spoken with the pitching coaches of all the teams that will have WBC players wearing the red, white and blue to discuss how — and how much — these pitchers will be used.

Torre also said his players can expect to do some conditioning, just as they would in their own camps.

“One pledge I made to the GMs and managers was, we’re going to return them in better shape then when we got them,” Torre said.

In the Giants’ case, that applies to Ryan Vogelsong and Jeremy Affeldt. Whether the Dominican, Venezuelan, Mexican and Puerto Rican managers will run drills too, I don’t know.

Bochy will do his part by ensuring that Pagan, Andres Torres, Marco Scutaro et al will get significant playing time early in the Cactus League. Interestingly, while this is the first time in ages that the Giants have a set team that is entirely healthy as the games begin, he will not play all the regulars together straight away. I had presumed all eight position-playing starters would appear in Saturday’s lineup against the Angels.

I presumed wrong.

Bochy wants to pace some of these guys. The exhibitions are starting as early as most of us can remember and Bochy does not want to “overplay” his veterans.

“Our job is getting them ready for the season,” he said. “We’ve got to think about the season, 162 games. I’ll sit down with my staff and (head athletic trainer) Dave Groeschner and we’ll see where we are physically, and see who’s ready to go.”

This is just me speculating, but I know the Giants want Pablo Sandoval to lose weight and have him working hard toward that end. They might feel Sandoval should expend more of his energy in the weight room than on the field before he leaves for the WBC, particularly since he played winter ball so recently and might not need as many at-bats for timing or innings afield.

Bochy did say that all five of his starting pitchers are ready to throw in the games. He and pitching coach Dave Righetti were to meet this afternoon to discuss the order after Vogelsong starts Saturday.

XXXXXXXXXX

Not much else happened at camp today, aside from Willie Mays’ arrival for his annual visit.

Oh, the Yahoo Sports reporter who penned this article ranking the 30 general managers by how sexy they are was here. (No, Saracevic, I’m not going to write a followup). Bochy looked at the writer and said, “No questions about Kevin Towers.”

Towers, the Arizona GM who was Bochy’s boss in San Diego, was named the sexiest GM. I asked Bochy what his gut reaction was when he saw that.